


Turned Masts To Cedar Trees

by bessemerprocess



Series: We Are A Billion Fragments [2]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Family, Anderberry Siblings, Broken Down Car, College, F/M, Turning Points
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-27
Updated: 2011-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-28 07:33:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/305391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bessemerprocess/pseuds/bessemerprocess
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One broken down car, one broken up relationship, and the beginning of something new.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Turned Masts To Cedar Trees

Will slumps outside the math building. This is the fifth argument he and Terry have had about his decision to specialize in music education instead of Spanish. It’s really over this time, he thinks. He actually stood up for himself, just this once, and she’d walked away. Will can't decide if he wants to hit something or if he wants to laugh hysterically. Neither option seems quite right.

He’s a little surprised when Shelby slumps right next to him.

“Hey,” he offers. She’s in his music theory class and his youth pedagogy class, but he’s not sure they’ve ever really talked out side of class before. “Bad day?”

“Not as bad as yours from the looks of it,” she says. Shelby is pretty, he’s not quite sure why he’d never noticed that before. She always looks so intense, like she knows what she wants from this world and is going to reach out and grab it with both hands. Will sort of wishes he was that confident about his own life. Right now he’s not confident about anything.

“My girlfriend just broke up with me. For like the fifth time,” Will admits. “She hates the music thing.” Terry never calls him a music major, she’d always just sort of waved her hands and said “music thing” like it was a cute little phase he was going through.

“You’re a music ed major,” Shelby states the obvious.

“She thinks I should an accountant. Thought, I guess.” He wonders if Terry even cares anymore. If she’s going to come back in a week and want to get back together again.

Shelby just laughs. “You would be a horrible accountant. Stick to music.” They were in Statistics for Education Majors together last semester, she ought to know.

“So why are you having a bad day?” he asks. She looks worn out, like she hasn’t been sleeping or eating right in a while.

“Day care called, my kids are sick, and I have to bail on history to go get them. Which would be fine, but my car is dead, and the girl I caught a ride in with isn’t out of class for another hour. It’s almost impressive how many emergencies a kid can have in a single semester.”

Will turns and looks at her. “You have kids?” Shelby doesn’t look that much older than he is, and at twenty he can’t imagine having two kids and going to college on top of that.

“Two, Rachel and Blaine,” Shelby answers with a smile. “They’re three and seventeen months.” She hands him a picture. They both have dark hair and Shelby’s smile.

“I’m done with classes for the day, and my car is in the green lot. I could give you a ride?” he offers. “I don’t have carseats or anything like that, though.”

“Are you sure? I live a block down from the day care, so we usually just walk, no carseats needed.”

His only plans for the rest of the day were to get drunk and sulk, and Will figures that can wait an hour or two. “Yeah, I can definitely take you. It’s really not a big deal.”

“Thank you so much,” Shelby says, and he leads the way to his car. He’s been driving the same thing since highschool, so it’s not much of a looker, but it runs fine and everything works, so he’s not one to complain. Terry, on the other hand, no, he’s not going to think about her until he gets back to his own apartment and can decided whether to be angry or sad or both.

Once they get in the car, he lets Shelby give him directions. It’s only a fifteen minute drive, but they wander away from the areas students usually live, into one of the better off working class neighborhoods. There are trees here, more than near his apartment complex, and it looks like a nice enough place to raise kids.

“Just in here,” Shelby says, pointing out a brick building with signs in primary colors. “Thank you so much for the ride,” she says as she unbuckles her seat belt.

“No problem. You want me to wait around and make sure you can get them home by yourself?” Will asks. He doesn’t want to abandon her here if there is some sort of emergency, or anything.

“No, but thanks. All the teacher here know me pretty well, we’ll get home fine,” Shelby says, but she looks like she appreciates the offer.

“Wait,” he says and she opens the car door. He grabs a pen and a piece of paper and scribbles down his phone number. “Just in case.”

“Just in case,” Shelby repeats, and takes the piece of paper. “Thank you again.”

“Really, it was nothing,” Will says, and watches to make sure she gets inside the building okay. He sort of wants to wait and make sure she can get home, but she told him not to and he should probably just take her at her word.

He makes a careful right turn out of the parking lot and thinks maybe he can figure out how to make a life without Terry after all.


End file.
